Movie Franchise:
2018 brought in a bunch of sequels into the picture, and as you may have expected, some of those were not as good as their predecessors, while some exceeded our expectations and improved the entire franchises overall! The Girl with the Spider’s Web, Hotel Transylvania 3, Jurassic World 2, Fantastic Beasts 2, Creed 2 and even Incredibles 2 were the films that were not able to beat their predecessors in terms of quality even though they might have been more successful at the Box Office. But there were some films that surely made their franchises better than they were before. Here’s a list:
The Worlds of DC
The recent entry of the Worlds of DC, Aquaman is certainly making all the headlines as it has finally rose the standard of the DCEU with quality and uniqueness. The movie sure wasn’t perfect, but it is a big success at the Box Office, and it has brought back the lost faith in this universe. The critics may not be liking the film as much as they liked Wonder Woman, but the audience is certainly finding it worth a watch. So you can finally say that DC has 2 great, 2 controversial and 2 bad films now.
What Aquaman has certainly done well here is that it has solved the villain problem that DC has had over the last 5 year. After General Zod, we got to see one big CGI villain after the other. The final acts of every film were kinda similar and unwatchable in the longer run. But Aquaman does solve that with 2 bad-ass villains with justifiable motives.
Halloween
John Carpenter’s original Halloween was certainly the classic that spawned 7 bad sequels. But now a reboot by Rob Zombie certainly brings the film back to the days of glory as not only is it a Box Office success, but it is critically well acclaimed and people are actually thrilled with what the film had to offer overall. Halloween fans could not have asked for anything more than this, as they have got the best of the franchise.
Mission: Impossible
The Mission: Impossible franchise is surely the best action, spy, thriller franchise out of all that is there. Tom Cruise has been the face of it for so long, and one after the other, he has elevated the quality of the franchise.
Sure MI 2 and MI 3 weren’t as good as the rest are, but moving from Ghost Protocol to Fallout, the level of stunts just keeps rising, and the quality of the plot also keeps raising the Bar. Mission: Impossible Fallout was the best film in the entire franchise, and the best things is that people are not done with it. They want more to do from this franchise.
Transformers – Bumblebee
The Transformers franchise was rotting one after the other even though the films made over Billion Dollars for the studios. But come to The Last Knight, it was proven that the franchise had nothing left in it, and people were done with all the Michael Bay-isms that the films had to offer. Then comes Bumblebee, set in the past, not really connecting to the major franchise in a big way and giving us the Transformers movie we deserve.
The film was really great at heart, and it was jam-packed with action. But the best part about the film was that it stays true to how the Transformers should really look like. It gives us the Transformers we have loved since our Childhood, and not the robots Michael Bay calls Transformers.
Honorable Mention – Deadpool
Many people may argue with the fact that Deadpool 2 was not better than the original, but I’d say that the sequel sure did take the franchise to a new level. It was packed with humor, gave us a whole lot of gory action, and it promised an overall fun time every time we watch it. The Super Duper cut was even better than the theatrical cut.
The MCU
The quality of Marvel Cinematic Universe certainly rose in 2018 as it put out 2 of its best films of all time! Sure Ant-Man and the Wasp was also pretty good, but Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War are unquestionably among the top 3 films that have ever been made.
Kevin Feige claimed Black Panther to be the best Marvel movie ever, and many of us could rightly agree to that. 2018 showed that Marvel has an insane range, and can do well with anything they put out. This is why the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the biggest franchise of Hollywood.
